Bosnia and the universal theme of police brutality

In the Bosnian protests of the last months,
the global scenario of police brutality has been re-enacted, with local
specifics. And the violence of the
police is itself a symptom of the failure of the current Bosnian political
order.

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We all instinctively grasp an idea of
globalisation – the individual global we,
who wear the same clothes, likes the same websites, and love and hate the same
public figures. Yet, every now and then, we are surprised by our lack of
individuality – at least I am disappointed by my own. One thinks she is living
a particular life, with a particular scenery and a unique form of Weltschmerz – then, surprise, surprise! From Caracas to
Kiev and further, comes the fist of global conventions, the waves of universal
themes, dictating the everyday, causing problems and shaping solutions.

Still, in small places, of which Sarajevo is an examplary case, people
believe that in the heaven of the small they are secured from the most cruel
aspects of the global – the absense of personal connections that are fading
with each new block of buildings that are built, with each advancment of the
smart technology that facilitates constant human interaction. For God's sake, Sarajevo
is hardly expanding! And even if it does expand, the social distance between
two people is one item of gossip away from social security numbers and family
secrets revolving around the ancestor who was born with a pig's tail.

This is why I’m never ready – even
years into reading reports
and professional concerns – to interview a minor who has been beaten and
humiliated by a policeman in Sarajevo. It happens everywhere – in New York you
might get frisked and shot at if you are wearing a hoodie and the wrong skin
tone, but that is New York and we in Sarajevo are one big family, apparently.

After the burning of the public building in
Sarajevo, around 38 boys and men were detained. Their account of the events
following the hours of February 7 are set in detention units and are about
fists, slaps, heavy boots and police bats shoved at defenseless bodies, handcuffed
hands and heads leaning down.

Image courtesy of Civil Rights Defenders

A demonstrator, a wrestler, enters
the room to tell his story. He walks
with difficulty and even a week after the events he looks angry. He starts his
story like any of Ivo Andric’s
characters – by softly hinting at the metaphysical in the very physical. “It
all started when they threw us in the river,” he said. On February 7th, the
police had employed a local lyrical metaphor of one women’s’ suicidal attempts,
by throwing people we are supposed to guard into the river.

The river in question is a dull
and smelly one, which you notice only when needing to find the nearest bridge
to cross it. Demonstrators, some pensioners and women, were standing next to a wall
dividing the pedestrian part of the street from a steep hill that ended in that
smelly dull river. After the wrestler regained consciousness at the riverbank,
he took a bat wrapped in the senseless hands of an unconscious man lying next
to him. He took the bat and climbed up to find the policeman that pushed him
down.

The South Slavs that left
agriculture and went to live in cities and work in factories have an
illustrative metaphor used to describe the instance when one is being taken
advantage of. They say You are being
fooled like an old and simple aunt from the countryside whose urban relatives
take money from a bundle she uses as a wallet. Every citizen of Bosnia is a
prototype of this aunt from the countryside, but some of us are more so. The ‘more
so’ among us – desperate, neglected, hungry and even homeless – were most of
the 38 who were detained.

Beating them, warning them to lie to the doctor and
say that they fell down the stairs, ordering their parents to sit on their
knees and keep their hands above their heads while waiting in the police
stations – all of this is part of the
global scenario of police brutality that the many ‘police trainings’ and ‘reformatory
processes’ facilitated by the international community in its many incarnations have
not prevented. It plays out with the
same repeated acts in spite of local differences.

The silver lining of all this is
that the marks left by our own – our men, our people – are finally visible. So
far, in modern Bosnian history, it has been the other – the aggressor, the
enemy, the supposed one and the real one – that has scared us. Finally, we see the
master political scam that runs through the veins of the ethno-nationalist
set up. Boundless, unaccountable, criminal power is just that. The genealogy of
who’s holding the bat and smashing your teeth doesn’t matter.

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